PM Internship 101
It was the summer of 2018 when I chanced upon Brandon Chu’s Medium series titled “The Black Box of Product Management”. I was still in my…
It was the summer of 2018 when I chanced upon Brandon Chu’s Medium series titled “The Black Box of Product Management”. I was still in my internship at Klipfolio and was trying to figure out what I wanted to do with my career. At that time, I had never understood what a Product Manager was, nor did I think it was the right career path for me. But the more I read up about what a Product Manager does, and the more I reached out to senior PMs for coffee chats, I started falling in love with the role.
In May 2019, I got offered a PM intern role at Shopify. I was pretty excited.
Fast forward, these past few months have been almost like a boot camp of self-discovery and training. I’ve not only learned tools on how to enhance my PM toolbox, but have also embarked on a journey in identifying my “superpowers” to overcome this thing we call impostor syndrome. I’ve always wanted to write an article at the end of my internship to reflect on the lessons learned, but an opportunity arose when Shopify recently put up a posting for new APM interns (we’re hiring!), and I’ve received many requests to craft a picture of what a PM intern looks like.
So in true documentation
fashion, I wanted to write down a small article to share my learnings to date within my role as a PM intern here at Shopify, and hopefully be able to help more aspiring PM interns.
I’ve asked those who reached out to send me a list of questions that they’d like me to answer, and below are the top questions I’ve received from the few. Here’s my advice:
What are you responsible for in your role?
A vast array of things which I’ll elaborate more on later. But the thing that I would say I’m responsible the most for as an intern is to be curious and to “be a constant learner”. As someone who is not graduating with an engineering degree, working in a highly technical company can be challenging, especially if you want to maximize impact on the company’s mission.
As a PM, I have to identify constraints needed to launch a product (time, money, and people), make the right trade-offs (through the help of my mentors and team), and find timely (yet inclusive) ways to foster execution.
I also look into ways that we can understand our merchants better: in terms of what their needs are, and what problems they are trying to solve. Through that, I need to work with our team to prioritize projects that will solve problems/create the most impact, communicate with stakeholders and the team in a clear and concise way, and work together to build a great product strategy.
What are the most important hard/technical skills for the role?
Every product team is different, so it really is dependent on what you’re trying to build. As a PM, I need to understand what my team members are saying. This could involve technical jargon that I’d have to unpack, and/or technical concepts that require an overall understanding of how something works.
As a heavily right-brained individual, I needed to improve my logic and comprehension skills. How do I retain important information beyond all the technical jargon? How do I convey what we’re building in a consumable and concise way to any stakeholder that may not be directly involved with the product? How can I communicate what we’re trying to do in a way that is comprehensive yet easily accessible? How do I ensure that the right calls are being made by the right people in the room? How do I ensure that everyone on the team is on the same page?
What can non-tech PMs bring to the table to really stand out?
Understand the merchant and their needs: What is the superpower that you bring to the table? Have you had a ton of retail experience and know the ins-and-outs of what makes/breaks a great retail store? Do you know how to conduct in-depth research and ask the right questions to gain as much context to better understand our merchants? Are you an excellent communicator? Do you have people skills that people will immediately trust you and follow your lead?
The question back to you would be: how can you complement your team on skills they don’t have so that together, your team can deliver the best product to our merchants?
What mistakes do inexperienced PMs tend to make?
Take your time.
I remember starting this role and wanting to make a direct impact immediately. However, great PMs have a deep understanding of our merchants and fully understand their needs/problems they need to solve.
Take the time to really understand the different types of customers you are trying to reach. Similar to a new business, a new product (feature, experiment, or even product line) will only thrive when you have an audience to serve.
As Bill Campbell says about a great entrepreneur, a great PM is someone:
“who creates a value hypothesis in the first place so that core product value (a real and significant solution to a valuable customer problem) can be tested and discovered.”
Tl;dr, Product Management may seem like a sexy role with lots of interesting challenges and the ability to “take the charge”. What people don’t talk about is the number of “no”s you’re gonna get, the number of circles you’re going to spin around in, and the number of times you have to hit the reset button. So ask yourself this: what are the problems I’m excited to solve? Instead of looking at the type of role you want to get, what are the lessons you want to learn? What are the skills you want to achieve (hard or soft)? Why do you want to join this team?
From there, figure out ways that you can solve the problem, and if taking on the APM role happens to be that, own it and work hard for it, because it’s going to be a fun ride.